The process of recovering Government land illegally occupied by encroachers who have formed land mafia is a complicated one owing to several reasons. Even if the Government is seriously interested in breaking the mafia and reclaiming the land yet the legal and administrative process of doing so is much more complicated than what we may imagine. The High Court has also been at the matter and has issued instructions to the Government to take firm steps towards evicting illegal occupancy. The Government has been complying with court orders and we are told that though demarcation of JDA land has been done yet the process is incomplete owing to absence of proper Revenue record and some illegal entries made in the same. The exercise of demarcating the land transferred to JDA from time to time had begun three months ago and in all about 1681 kanals have been demarcated which according to conservative estimate should cost nearly 500 crore rupees. It was in the month of May last that the Division Bench of the High Court had ordered the Government to draw action plan of retrieval of illegally occupied land in the districts of Samba and Jammu. It was in that context that demarcation of the JDA land had been undertaken. The question is that land mafia has been a work since a long time and the curse is that a nexus has come into being of the land grabbers and the Revenue functionaries. There will be no takers of the argument that the Revenue records are not available. Actually, it is the conspiracy of the interested functionaries in the Revenue Department to obstruct the process of retrieval of illegally occupied land. In this nexus many politically powerful persons are involved. In fact colonies have been raised on illegally occupied land because the Government turned a blind eye and let land grabbing go on. The issue of land grabbing and the activities of land mafia have been adequately highlighted in the past. As a result of public cry, the Government and the court have focused attention on the issue and JDA has been able to make some progress in demarcating or retrieving the encroached land but the process has to continue till most of the land still will illegal occupiers recovered. It is also important for the Government to ensure that land grabbers do not make any attempt to re-occupy the land once again as has been seen in the past.
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